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I'll admit it: I'm addicted to my e-mail. I can access it from my phone, my laptop, my desktop at a moments notice. A little too easily. I just read this interesting summary on LifeHacker around why?

How many times a day do you refresh your inbox? How often do you do it without thinking? The Mind Hacks blog tackles why checking your email can become such a compulsive, addicting behavior: because, like the slot machines, it has "variable interval reinforcement."

Sometimes, but not every time, the behaviour produces a reward. Everyone loves to get an email from a friend, or some good news, or even an amusing web link. Sometimes checking your email will get you one of these rewards. And because you can never tell which time you check will produce the reward, checking all the time is reinforced, even if most of the time checking your email turns out to have been pointless. You still check because you never know when the reward will come.

Like Pavlov's dogs, the article discusses ways to recondition yourself to stop hitting that "Get Mail" button so often - by enforcing timed delays, making it harder to do, and removing or moving the new mail notification. This article's a little heavy on the psych-talk and "we're just animals with animal responses," but it's a really interesting look at the why's and how's of online addiction. Why email is addictive (and what to do about it)